Public transportation is seen as only a thing for children and/or the poor, at least in too many of my circles.
Politicians and the public don't seem willing to invest to overcome the chicken and egg problem. Doesn't help that the legacy transport we do have is neglected, further harming it's reputation.
Do you have example of places with density similar to US where public transport works well? Australia has some in urban centres, but otherwise car centric. Same in NZ. Elecric bus to my place costs 8x more than driving EV (before it was taxed)
California has only a slightly lower population density than France. France has 27,000km of operating passenger rail tracks, California 2,600km (similar to Ireland, a country of 5 million people not noted for its public transport, with a lower population density than California).
This is a weird form of American exceptionalism where people insist that the US can't have the nice things that all other rich countries have, because Density. And this might even be true if you're talking about, say, Wyoming. But it absolutely isn't an excuse for places like California or Florida.
The density issue isn't country wide, but about metro areas. See Spain: If you look at the entire country and divide by population, it looks like the one of the least dense countries in Europe. But what if instead we look at where people live? Get the population density of the square kilometer where each person lives, and divide by number of people, so completely empty space doesn't count for anything. Then you see Spaniards live in areas denser than Liechtenstein. And guess what? Spain has top notch public transport, including high speed rail, because every endpoint is dense. I am right now sitting in a town, population around 100k, with higher population density than New York's Upper East side. We don't even have that much public transport, because only the elderly and the disabled need it, given that I can be on any given edge of town by walking 2 kms. In your typical US suburb, that gets you nowhere.
So it's not country density, but population center density. Single family homes with yards and individual garages make public transport pretty bad, as the catchment rates of each stop just don't have enough people. Just put the people closer together, and have more farmland/forest around the town.
Whilst I can spiel off complaints, public transport in Australia gets my kid to and from school everyday, and myself to and from work in two different cities, everyday, without being late. (When the union isn't striking).
Not to whom you're directing your question, but I drive the short distance to the car park at the interchange/station, then catch the bus the long distance to the city.
It's a great setup, and/but the very specific infrastructure[0] that I use only services maybe a quarter of the city's mid-suburbia. There's other public transport that services plenty of the rest though.
Auckland is an incredibly busy city, on the same kind of world scale as Sydney, as far as my understanding goes.
The interchange has a four level car park that fills up to about three quarters full by 8am-ish. A secondary car park was just finished maybe a couple of years ago, with an additional ~50% capacity.
Australia kind of gives you the choice. The inner city areas have great PT, great public spaces and some awesome outdoor walkable retail/food streets. But then you've also got the outer suburbs which is a hellscape similar to the US.
It's also not that expensive to rent inner city or buy an apartment. The outer suburbs mostly exist because people have a mentality of invest in land at any cost, even if it means living in a wasteland and commuting 3 hours a day.
Which tells you that ChatGPT is essentially useless.
Like, why post this? The difference between the two figures is so vast as to be pointless, and it likely just made them up anyway. This is something that you can actually look up.
A lot of people barely make enough to pay rent before factoring in a car.
Your options end up being iffy used cars or financing. The used car market is a nightmare, you can easily end up with a lemon, but legally you have no real recourse.
If Bob sells Bill a used car, and the engine explodes 2 days later Bob owes Bill nothing.
This doesn't always happen, but it's a concern.
Finance a car and you'll probably spend a significant portion of your income just commuting.
Vs living in a transit centric city where bus/metro fair is a nominal cost
I legit took a girl home after I asked her if she knew why the train was late.
In Amsterdam at least one of the train stations has a piano. It becomes a 3rd place were people can make friends and socialize.
We don’t have many 3rd places in the US where you can exist without spending money.